


When She Died Inside

by orphan_account



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>IABD Universe.<br/>Everything that happens between Claire Bennet, Gabriel Gray, and Noah Gray in the four years before IABD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When She Died Inside

She decided to name him Noah, after her deceased father. Gabriel said he liked the name, but she couldn't care less what he thought. Even if he was going to be the only one raising their kid, a kid conceived out of sorrow and depression. A kid conceived when Claire turned suicidal and turned to the only person who she thought hated her enough to kill her. Except, he hadn't killed her. For all their differences, they were too much alike; he wasn't too bad once you got past his psychopathic tendencies.

When she told him weeks later that she was pregnant with his kid, he passed out on the floor in a dead faint. Abortion, she told him when he woke up, was what she wanted. Claire Bennet was not going to have a kid this early in her life. An unplanned kid with a father she could barely stand. He begged and cried until she agreed to carry the kid and give it to him.

He stayed with her in her Costa Verde house during the pregnancy, the house that held few happy memories about her now-deceased family.

"I don't want to see him again," Claire looked up at Gabriel, who was holding Noah in his arms.

"Are you sure? He looks just like you," he said, looking lovingly down at the kid in his arms. She peeked at the bundle in his arms. Brown hair and blue eyes peeked out from the bundle.

"He doesn't look me. I don't want to see you either. Stay in the Costa Verde house and leave me alone. Don't contact me and don't tell anyone who Noah's real mother is."

Gabriel sighed and turned away, walking the kid and himself out of the room and out of her life for the foreseeable future.

* * *

Peter Petrelli had always been a good friend and uncle during the months before Noah's conception and birth. Claire knew he had been a little disappointed in her in the first couple months, especially after he found who the father was. He wouldn't abandon her though, and he eventually came to like Gabriel. Gabriel and Peter became a sort of dynamic duo, more like brothers then Nathan and Peter would ever be. They went shopping together for necessary baby supplies and changed one of the rooms into a nursery. Life was good for all of them.

Claire had always assumed that Peter knew that she would not be raising the kid. After Noah was born, he called her constantly, telling her that Noah needed a mother in his life. He told her she was different, special. She told him she wasn't going to ruin her life for a kid she didn't even want. They didn't talk in a neutral context again.

He became violent in a way. An extremist against Kaito's formula. He just couldn't accept that the world had changed.

Claire had long since accepted the fact that the world would not change back to the way it was. The world would not get better either. So if the world would not change, she would change with it. She became a master in self-defense and learned to hide her emotions from the world. She became the person her dad tried to keep her from becoming. Claire Bennet was no longer naïve, little Claire-Bear anymore.

It was two years after Noah's birth when The Company sent her a case file on one Peter Petrelli, extremist against non-natural powers. Claire was one of the best they had and they needed the best to bring him down

* * *

Knox was not an easy guy to like. He was a man who fed off the fear and did whatever he needed to create that fear. In Claire's eyes, though, it wasn't required to like your partner as long as you wouldn't endanger them in the field.

Daphne was a different story entirely. She was someone Claire felt like she could actually like of she wasn't so hard now. Maybe, in a different life they would be friends.

She had a family with Matt; she had Molly, her adopted daughter and her newborn daughter. When Claire came over one night to pick up a couple work things, it made her wonder what she had missed out. Noah was a little over two years old by then and she had missed so many milestones for him. It was too late now to change that.

* * *

The first time she saw Noah after he was born was a little less than five months after Knox, Daphne, and her teamed up.

They had been chasing after Peter for five months when they suddenly caught wind of him in Costa Verde. The company sent them express, meaning Daphne ran two trips, one trip carrying Knox on her back and the other carrying Claire. When they arrived, Claire convinced them to split the city into three sections, herself taking the residential section that Gabriel and Noah lived in. She didn't look around, searching for Peter. She knew right where he would be, visiting his best friend and godson.

There was an abandoned two-story house directly across the street from her old house. She broke into the house via the backdoor and snuck up to a second-floor window. The next three hours were spent watching Noah, Gabriel, and Peter be a family. For the first time in a long time, she smiled and then wondered what life would be like if she had stayed.

And when she regrouped with her partners, she told them that there was no sign of Peter.

* * *

In the two years she had worked at The Company, she had never taken a day off work. As cruel as the company was, they still allowed for sick and vacation day. So by the time she decided to start watching Noah and Gabriel, she had almost six months of vacation time saved up.

So for the next few months, she would take a week off each month, sit in the abandoned house across the street and watch them be a family. It eventually got to the part where she bought the house across the street and made it her own.

* * *

When she finally killed Peter, it did not come with either of her normal reactions. She did not feel calm and collected or insanely happy, she felt grief. Deep, overwhelming grief.

It didn't help the past Peter was still running around. That she would have to kill him twice. It certainly didn't help that Molly had said Peter was in Costa Verde, exactly where Gabriel and Noah lived.

Before her partners and her arrived at Costa Verde, she steeled herself so she could make the hard decisions if needed. The only thing she wasn't banking on was Knox taking her kid hostage. Her Noah. But she couldn't do anything. She had to pretend that she hated Gabriel and that the kid was not her own. She had to pretend to want to kill Peter again.

And then Noah had died, killed by Knox. When Gabriel went after him, she snapped and shot Daphne in the shoulder. She grabbed the syringe she always carried on her for situations like this and filled it with her blood. She ran over to Noah, the kid that was her own. The kid that she had spent months watching grow up.

When Noah was conscious again, Peter was gone and Claire was holding Noah in her arms crying as Gabriel sat beside her, an arm around her shoulders while his other hand rested on Noah's head.

* * *

She quit The Company after that. She covered up Knox's murder and had the Hatian wipe Daphne's memory. She spent the next two years catching up on everything she had missed. Trips to the zoo, making lunches and dinners, being a mother and a girlfriend. She had to catch up on it all.

And when Gabriel asked her to marry him when Noah was four, she said yes.


End file.
